Everyday Church

by

Our elders read Everyday Church a few months back.  The book, by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, is a fantastic, eye-opening read on who we are called to be as the Church of Jesus Christ.

We are starting a series with the same title this week, and many of our members have already begun to dissect the book.  I am excited to see what the Spirit will teach in the coming 5 intensive weeks.

Book Overview

We live in an increasingly post-Christian culture. More and more we find ourselves on the margins as less and less people have any intention of ever attending church. What used to work doesn’t work anymore and we need to adapt.

Helping us to see the way forward, this book offers practical ideas and personal stories for engaging with Western society. Find out how to effectively reach people in the context of everyday life and take hold of the opportunity to develop missional communities focused on Jesus.

Favorite Quotes

  1. Some prominent churches are growing, but much of this is transfer growth rather than true evangelistic growth (10).
  2. Because we regard people as innately Christian in orientation, we think we can reach them through church meetings (23).
  3. Our values, lifestyle, and priorities are radically different from the surrounding culture (32).
  4. We can no longer assume the wider culture matches that of the church (39).
  5. Trying to match the world begs the question, If the church is like the world then why bother with the church?  The more we become like the world, the less we have to offer (49).
  6. Even if we could produce cool church events, we would create a generation of Christian consumers who look to the church to entertain them (49).
  7. People are often attracted to the Christian community before they are attracted to the Christian message (56).
  8. An exclusive focus on community will kill community (60).
  9. The context for pastoral care and discipleship is everyday life (66).
  10. Over-pastoring is a tendency to dominate or manipulate or to be overbearing and too intense when we speak.  Under-pastoring is a failure to challenge when we should or an avoidance of difficult people and conversations (83).
  11. Our lives are the evangelistic events (89).
  12. You will never attract people to Jesus if you are not excited about Jesus (93).
  13. People think they know what to expect when a new church opens, but when a group of people share their lives together as the people of God and get involved in blessing the city, then no one is putting up defenses.  It is a stealth church (99).
  14. We are called to be the people everyone would love to have as their neighbors (102).
  15. If you find it hard to talk about Jesus with Christians, then how do you expect to talk about him with unbelievers (111)?
  16. Let your unbelieving friends overhear you gospeling one another (112).
  17. It is easy for the world to ignore a solitary Christian living consistently as a believer; he or she can be dismissed as an eccentric.  But when a diverse group of Christians lives for Christ as a community of love and demonstrable, mutual affection, then society will find it far harder to dismiss us (134).
  18. To claim our nation as Christian and expect special privileges from the state is false grace (137).
  19. Relationships are time intensive.  Everyday church fills every day, but it does not necessarily fill it with extra activities (143).
  20. Prayer is not a support activity to mission.  It is itself a frontline missionary activity (149).
  21. We cannot be the people of God with a communal and missional identity without opening up our lives to one another and allowing our decisions to be shaped by the community to which we belong (159).

If the church is like the world then why bother with the church? -Everyday Church